Image: Pirelli F1 Media Center.

The 2012 season was so diverse at times it felt like it could be a well written novel, with three distinct stages in both car performance, character development and a final battle that would be worthy of the most epic of ending scenes it really was something straight from Hollywood. Even after the very satisfying conclusion there still rumbled in the air the possibility of a further twist with the the possibility of an FIA appeal, however that was more a symptom of the ever increasing interactiveness of the sport rather then a real issue, in short, there was always a green flag visible.

However the 2013 season promises to have some of the most exciting elements in recent F1 memory, with several key shakeups in the field, something we havn’t really seen since the 2010 season.

- How McLaren will operate without Lewis Hamilton:

Image: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes / LAT Photographic ©

Hamilton has become synonymous with McLaren in the same way that Michael Schumacher was Ferrari. Despite the fact that he has had comparatively smaller success Lewis always draws the crowd, he is a brave exciting racer and on his day you get the sense you are witnessing something truly spectacular. However since Jenson has moved to McLaren the two have traded wins fairly evenly, for all of Hamilton’s fanfare there are days that Jenson can look absolutely dominant and put Lewis in his shade. The problem for Jenson seems to be that when the car doesn’t suit his style he performs at a relatively lower level than some other drivers with an unsuitable car setup.

What will be interesting about the 2012 pairing for us is not necessarily the introduction of Sergio Perez, as this will certainly be something to watch, but just how McLaren handle the fact the Jenson will be the lead driver/ He will have worked on the MP4-28 from the word go in its development and the fact the team will be pushing the upgrades to suit his style, will this take Jenson’s performance to another level? Jenson in many ways has arguably all of the characteristics that really matter to be a champion, he can be blisteringly quick but he is also super reliable and on a bad day he still brings home solid points. He may not be the outright quickest driver but when the car suits his style you wouldn’t know that.

If McLaren move towards a more traditional “Number 1 and Number 2″ driver system and push development towards Jenson’s preferences we could really see the rise of something special, particularly since by the numbers the MP4-27 was already 2012′s fastest car.

- The closing up of the front running field:

Image: Pirelli F1 Media Center

I recently heard Adrian Newey quoted as saying that its becoming increasingly difficult to design a standout car because of the tightness of the regulations and the fact that all the competitors have now had years to catch what was once the absolute class of the field in RB5 and RB6. This is true, Red Bull’s competitive strengths of the front wings and exhaust blown diffusers are mostly no more and with even smaller innovations like the poorly named ‘Double DRS’ being made illegal for 2013 it will become increasingly difficult to differentiate the front running teams with major innovations. This years battle was mostly about the Coanda effect exhausts and while the teams that mastered it moved forward and the teams who were late to introduce it moved backwards it really is starting to become the situation of diminishing returns.  Despite contrary opinion Red Bull wern’t even the fastest car this year, that honor goes to McLaren and for the start of next year the field could be even closer with Ferrari optimizing the radical F2012. Another aspect worth considering is the fact that DRS won’t be freely used in qualifying (it will be limited to the DRS zones), if you look at race day the gap between the front runners and the midfield is even less and this could be a big trend of the new year.

We expect 2013 not to be won on outright pace, but rather driver consistency and car reliability, Red Bull Racing, McLaren and Ferrari could in fact be very evenly matched with Lotus and Mercedes AMG moving into the mix on pure pace.

- The James Key Torro Rosso:

Image: Scuderia Torro Rosso / Getty Images ©

Dietrich Mateschitz was recently quoted as saying that he didn’t see the performance of the Torro Rosso car in 2012 as satisfactory as a whole and that he would prefer the team moved closer to the true midfield. When Torro Rosso was purchased by Red Bull in 2005 to become Scuderia Torro Rosso for the 2006 season, “customer cars” were something that was legal, meaning that you could effectively sell, or in this case give your cars to another team. Because of this through much of its life Torro Rosso inherited slightly out of date Red Bull cars that were quite often a design by Adrian Newey. At certain points in its life as a team people have believed it actually had the superior engine and aerodynamic package. For instance the 2006 Torro Rosso with its rev limited V10 motor was a very competitive car on its day particularly on high speed tracks and the 2008 STR3 which Vettel took his win in spectacular fashion shared its design with the Adrian Newey Red Bull Racing car of that year.

However come the 2010 season customer cars were banned in the sport and Torro Rosso have dropped in competitiveness since. Despite scoring several points finishes this season there is a general impression from Red Bull that the team can best demonstrate the talents of its junior drivers if it was capable of challenging for podiums like Sauber was this season. Well one of the key ingredients of the 2012 Sauber car has moved to Torro Rosso, James Key a former technical director for Force India and Sauber has looked to turn the teams fortunes around. Key is credited for creating incredibly impressive cars on relatively smaller budgets and some of his handy work can be seen at Force India in which their car challenged for the win at Spa in 2009 and a weekend later challenged for a podium at the Italian GP, taking 4th position and was also regularly a strong points challenger in 2010. Since 2011 Key has been working for Sauber, being one of the key influences of their 2012 car which by some is regarded the most impressive design in the field with what was achieved at their budget point and was a regular front runner for large portions of the season.

A team is obviously more than one man but this is still a big deal for Torro Rosso. We have seen in past that Torro Rosso have the capabilities to built top notch Formula 1 cars, if their 2013 challenger is closer to the front runners this could give us the opportunity to really see what Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne can do.

- Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes:

Image: Pirelli F1 Media Center ©

I’ll be the first to admit, I find it difficult to express in coherent words how excited I am to see this pairing. Not because I didn’t like Lewis at McLaren but simply because what a big deal the whole thing is. How competitive will the car be? How will Lewis go against Nico Rosberg? How will Lewis enjoy the relationship with Ross Brawn? How will the Mercedes team move forward with this news? Will the car be challenging for wins? Will Lewis really bring half a second per lap to the team?

A lot of the talk that Hamilton would regret the decision isn’t entirely justified, Mercedes GP as of 2011 and 2012 were still not really one of the biggest teams in funding, they fell a long way short in budget of the “Big 3″ but over the next 3 years Daimler has accredited a substantial budget increase and when you look at it, Mercedes were extremely fast at the start of the season. 2 pole positions and a race win is no small deal and reliability aside they were up there with Red Bull and McLaren even as far into the season as Monaco. The development difficulties of the DDRS didn’t help with their year long development nor did the fact they were late to the Coanda game but the talent and depth of the team is obvious. Many people forget that it took Red Bull quite a few years to become a winning team and Mercedes are getting closer and closer each year.

Just what Lewis will bring to the team is difficult to define, they already had two spectacular drivers but everyone up and down the paddock knows just how fast Lewis is. Another thing i’m looking forward to is the fact that in the later part of 2012 the pressure of the title was clearly lifted from Hamilton’s shoulders and the performances he produced were on a different level, he has already stated he’s not really expecting to challenge for the title in 2013 so is this what we can expect from him at every race? But then again, i’m sure Jenson felt a similar thing if you asked him in 2008 if he’d challenge for the title next year and we all know how that turned out.

- The forward movement of the new teams:

Image: Pirelli F1 Media Center

As discussed above, the regulations are very stable for the next few years and have very little room for drastic innovation, this could really see the closing up of the pack. Will we see Caterham and Marussia move into the true midfield? I was very impressed by the quality of the cars built by these teams this year, the Caterham was ever strengthening its design team and the Marussia was extremely aerodynamically solid considering its pace without KERS. With the collapse of the HRT team following the 2012 season this could make for some incredibly tense qualifying sessions for the larger teams, particularly if these two move half a second per lap or more closer to the midfield. It takes time to move a brand new team to established team quality and the amount of organizational and mechanical processes that need to be put in place are difficult to comprehend, but while Caterham would be disappointed not to score a point in the 2012 season they were only one place away. 2013 could be really the first year in quite a long time with 22 competitive cars on the grid and with the backmarkers moving closer to the midfield and the midfield moving closer to the front runners it really is difficult to imagine just what will happen on a race by race basis.